In Memorium
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: She can't escape. But rejection is never entirely an option. Ulquiorra x Orihime x Ichigo.


Disclaimer: Bleach and its respective characters are property of Kubo Tite.

* * *

"Kiss me."

Instead, she pinched herself in case she was dreaming. And when she didn't wake up to an empty bedroom full of warm morning light, she came up with the next best answer to his request. She was nightmaring.

The mental scribble formed in quick and cursive lettering, faster than she could have ever done in forty minutes of Classics at school.

'_Nightmaring: the event in which a series of pleasant images too good to be true occurs in the mind during sleep.'_

He stared her down, irises pooling from the darkest pinpricks.

Grey to black to brown.

Kurosaki-kun grinned at her as he raised one perfectly-formed finger, beckoning.

"Haven't you always wanted…"

"No."

The voice she heard rung a familiar bell. She _had_ dreamed of this moment; when she was stronger, better than she was, better than she could be. Slow and steady like the wise old tortoise that had won the race. Her legs weren't giving and she wasn't falling and she wasn't watching the sky spin and sprout crimson speckles and _just watching_ as they all fell in one swoop to earth and…

She wasn't sinking. She wouldn't give him… she couldn't give _it_ that gratification.

In mid-grin, his thumb and index finger smoothing the curve of her chin, the blade burst from his chest. Catching a glimpse of the rest of the sword flourishing from behind him, she corrected herself. The blade burst _through_ his chest.

He never quit with the smiling. His mouth remained stretched to each corner while his arms slumped down by his sides, one hand trailing along the cloth of her dress in a weak attempt at groping. Dead in a blink with the blood trickling from the font of the grinning mouth pursed in a misplaced kiss. She knew that her captors favored the rushed beauty of destruction. The kind she wouldn't dare allow on her behalf but which she could understand, if not appreciate fully.

His face was melting, Kurosaki-kun's. Amidst the congealing mass of bone, blood and skin, the number nine was beheld by two pairs of eyes in the fleeting moment in which its evidence of existence was apparent. Two pairs of eyes, one brown and the other jaded, one behest by horror and the other awash with apathy.

"Tempting the devil again?" Ulquiorra chose his words carefully. He could deliver an admonition, order, insult and question in one sentence, then hurl it to her like a brick to the gut. "Aaroniero never knew how to tell if the game was up."

Bad moon, bad dream, bad choices, she reminisced unwillingly. Here she was now. Back again where the sun bleached flesh and souls ghost white. Where her hair glowed grey, not silver. An old dead color.

"You…" But lost souls could never really die. "… didn't make it."

"No, I didn't."

"You were supposed… supposed… you…"

"Are you alive, woman?"

It's strange how his lips barely seemed to skim over his words as he spoke. It made her question her own, whether she was truly whole and corporeal as she had built herself to be over the years. Not a girl anymore, but in this place, even less of the grown-up Orihime she had begun to believe in day after day.

Of course, that didn't count for the night where the dreams were inevitable. She called them dreams because she wasn't scared anymore, except when they would take that turn for the worse when she couldn't break free from reality and then she was nightmaring again before she could tell herself she knew so much better.

He slid the blade closer, the cutting-edge caressing the sheen of sweat at her neck. Green eyes, rough and luminous, the color of jade stones shorn from barren mines.

"I don't blame you for leaving. But there are other ways… better ways to ensure reunion…"

"I'm sorry…"

"Do you believe in forgiveness, woman? Do you believe in destiny?"

She swallowed down another miserable apology. This always ended the same way.

"Do you believe that paths can intertwine, even if the other diverges from their chosen fate?"

Swallow again. Think of the correct answer. A heart beats for one reason alone: to provide for one alone. Blood flows from one heart and back to the same heart. The heart beats for no one but the self. The self is for no one but the heart. There is truth in that, truth she has resisted in accepting for this long. Yet it is a dirge attuned to her life's melody, when the music is stripped to its bare bones.

'_Loneliness: the first and last state of being.'_

The blade swung.

* * *

When she awoke a second later, the first sound was the air cutting through in the hum of a fine whistle.

She rarely drew on her dreams for inspiration. The manga of Orihime Kurosaki was garnering acclaim for the soft warmth and gentle emotions portrayed through her characters. For Ichigo, the pages of his wife's artwork served as both comfort and worry. After all they had been through together, Orihime had surpassed him in the art of withdrawing pain from even the simplest of actions.

"Don't you remember?" He asked after another of her nightmares, wondering if he'd added enough honey to the hot milk she was sipping from. "It might help if you want to understand how you must have felt…"

She laughed softly, in case anything louder would return in a hollow echo. "Oh no, I'm fine."

"Some memories can't be buried that easily. You do realize that?"

"I know." Her smile was crooked, almost lopsided. A half-lie at most. "Believe me, Ichigo."

He returned it knowingly with a part-grin of his own. "Always."

But he couldn't leave it at that. He had to know. To realize it.

"Does it hurt?"

She listened to his words, tasted them with the sweet milk, and placed a hand over her heart.

"A little."

She was warm in his arms the next night, safe from most harm she could think of. And when sleep finally crept over them, so did an unexpected gush of courage.

She would be stronger than this.


End file.
